Palaver Strings with Chris Patishall Trio

This program is centered around the Zodiac Suite, a 1945 masterpiece by jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams. Inspired by Williams’ musical contemporaries and their respective zodiac signs, this twelve-movement piece is packed with personality and kaleidoscopic character changes. Palaver will join forces with acclaimed jazz pianist Chris Patishall, who will bring this piece to life in a new arrangement for jazz trio and strings. Palaver will also perform pieces by two other pioneering women, Jessie Montgomery and Lili Boulanger.

Palaver Strings is a musician-led string ensemble and nonprofit organization based in Portland, ME. Our mission is to strengthen and inspire community through music. In our musician-led model, Palaver’s musicians share artistic and administrative leadership, guided by a passion for engaging new audiences, addressing social justice issues, and amplifying underrepresented voices. Equally committed to performance and education, Palaver presents a full season of live performances and serves over 325 students each year through the Palaver Music Center in Portland.

As a musician-led ensemble, Palaver operates collaboratively and democratically, with our 13 Co-Artistic Directors sharing musical and administrative leadership. Our adventurous musical programming is shaped directly by individual musicians, who bring their unique interests and experiences to the table. We all share a passion for expanding the possibilities of the string orchestra medium, embracing cross-genre projects, unconventional venues, new and reimagined music, and community collaborations. Palaver uses music to address social justice issues, promote education and dialogue, and amplify underrepresented voices. Education is central to our mission, and we strive to share these values with students of all ages and backgrounds through the Palaver Music Center.

Most know Chris Pattishall as a pianist with a “forthright relationship to the jazz tradition” (New York Times) and a hard-earned endorsement from the music’s traditional establishment—Wynton Marsalis once shortlisted Pattishall among his favorite young improvisers, and he’s also worked with Jimmy Heath, Jon Hendricks and Wycliffe Gordon.

One of his influences is Thelonious Monk’s playing which he describes as “There’s something about the way that Monk plays—part of it you recognize, but the other part of you can’t tell if he broke the piano; you can’t tell how the sound is created. I felt that in this particular film, and that opened me up to experiencing other things.” It was within this broader context that Pattishall’s relationship to the piano developed and he was in his teens when Pattishall’s interest in the instrument truly flourished. He quickly became one of the most in-demand pianists in the region, often working multiple nights a week and going on his first tour before he could legally drive. A pivotal shift came when Chris began studying with Marcus Roberts, a process which led him to a deep affinity for pre-bebop jazz. “I started to notice all of this idiosyncrasy in the early music that I wasn’t hearing in later stuff which also connected rhythmically to what I was drawn to in hip-hop—the emphasis on the beat and the way the rhythm had a little more weight to it. You also start realizing as you dig into the details that the way these things get reduced in pedagogy and criticism totally fails to pay homage to how wild and irregular and personal all of these artists were.”